


Freezer Burn

by alluthebird (legarevirtuoso)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cerberus - Freeform, Cryogenics, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Don't Try This At Home, Dubious Morality, Mind Manipulation, Moral Ambiguity, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Psychological Torture, Realistic, Self Insert Week 2016, Self-Insert, Tags Contain Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:57:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6807799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legarevirtuoso/pseuds/alluthebird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Welcome to the future, little bird. It's such a shame someone plucked your wings before you could see it.</p>
<p>Welcome to Cerberus. We are the future.</p>
<p>-or-</p>
<p>Cryonics are wonderful in theory but so terrifying in practice. What if someone bought your corpse and didn't use it for the intended purpose? What if you were bought by an organization so shady that its own species considers them terrorists? Such is the plight of one young woman suddenly thrown over a century into the future, out of her depth and in the clutches of the devil themselves.<br/>Sanity is overrated in the face of the infinite mysteries of space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freezer Burn

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is what I've been doing. Welcome to my contribution to tumblr's Self-Insert Week 2016.
> 
> Nope, still haven't beaten Mass Effect. Don't care. Space adventures.
> 
> Warning: This... is an actual method of mind control/brain washing. It will only get worse from here. Do. Not. Do. This. To. People. Seriously, do not.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Patient A-397 was a questionable pile of legal issues.

Patient A-397 would really like to stop referring to themself in the third person.

Patient A-397 was six minutes and a long bath away from strangling the shit out of this fucker with his robot eyes.

Patient A-397 did not, in fact, know or care what ‘Cerberus’ was or how it cared for ‘advancing humanity via any means necessary’.

Patient A-397 was very glad that someone had seen fit to undo the cryonics process and bring her vitrified body back to a given value of the word life.

Patient A-397 would really like it to have been anyone but this shady as shit organization who had bought her body.

Patients A-396 and A-398 were already failures, if she was listening correctly.

Patients A-396 and A-398 had been terrible investments.

Patient A-397 kind of wanted to cackle maniacally at the man on the screen, because who honestly purchased a batch of dead people and expected them to meet one’s expectations at anything.

Patient A-397 was pretty sure what Robot Eye Grampa wanted was not actually  _ possible _ for anyone to achieve.

_ Patient A-397 did not accept this quest, no thank you. _

Patient A-397 would like to cordially invite the Illusive Man, head of Cerberus, to the grand celebration of his upcoming nuptial bliss, henceforth to be called ‘fornicating vigourously with a dehydrated cactus’.

Patient A-397 was, in fact, aware of how much money Cerberus had spent on thawing and upgrading her body.

Patient A-397 would like them to know that she did not, in fact, sign up for  _ any of the cybernetic modifications _ .

Patient A-397 was pretty sure that there was a precedent for a cybernetically enhanced person out of cryo that ended up being trained for warfare, and she was frankly appalled that not one nerd in the process had pointed out the track record.

Hail Cerberus. Her name was Jamie Buchanan Barnes and she was not having this bullshit today.

This is what she remembers before the room:

She doesn’t remember her name. (Her name is not Jamie Buchanan Barnes.) She was born on the 26th of April in anno domini 1990 in a place called Fort Knox, within the now defunct state of Kentucky within the nation of the United States of America (now part of the nation-state of the United North American States, as of about eighty years or so after her demise). She doesn’t remember what she did for a living. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been very important. At some point, she had signed up for the Alcor Life Extension Foundation and set up a life insurance policy to pay for it. She does remember that she was a giant nerd (as evidenced by her deep soul-filled rage at the failure of ‘modern’ tech support to fail to identify an  _ origin story _ for a  _ member of the goddamned Avengers _ ) and had a strange encyclopedic knowledge of the most useless yet useful bits of random information.

She does remember that she was not a soldier. Not like the man on the screen wants her to be. She remembers that when she died, she was to be preserved via vitrification until such a time as science had advanced enough to fix the reason why she died, and then she was to be ‘thawed out’ and her carefully planned money was supposed to pay for her treatment.

(A shadow organization not officially sanctioned by the government was not part of the plan.)

Her life was hazy, details fuzzed by brain damage and over a century and a half of cooling in liquid nitrogen, but she was pretty sure that the contract she had signed included a clause that stated  _ her body was not to be sold to a shady as shit person with more money than sense _ . She may be annoyed at the audacity of this fucker to straight up tell her that not only had he purchased her cryonically frozen body, but had purchased two others from her ‘pod’ and that they had failed. Jamie, because that was her name now, had met the two people he had so callously tossed aside.

Mr. and Mrs. Peabody had literally died within months of each other. One from old age and one from grief, at the ages of ninety-three and eight-five respectively. What exactly did the man and his organization expect from resurrected geriatrics?

Jamie was pretty sure that Mr. and Mrs. Peabody had been taken out back behind the proverbial shed and put down like the worst of the concentration camps. This was not an organization that concerned itself with pesky things like ‘ethics’ and ‘core moral values’. The man in question seemed dead set on taking advantage of her post-resurrection lethargy to instill some of the actual core values of his organization in her, and she was pretty sure there was some sense to it.

It would have probably have seemed like completely sensible rhetoric if, you know, Jamie hadn’t already concluded she was about to become a living embodiment of the Winter Soldier and this was Hydra.

Or she could end up dead.

Again.

Because it was so pleasant the first time. What with the dying of a heart attack due to what she had been told was apparently a case of Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (and by told, Jamie totally meant that she had eavesdropped shamelessly on the gossipy doctor types). 

On the upside of this Cerberus thing, at least she had a new heart. Seeing as how hers had developed a giant hole in it, this was actually extremely vital. And apparently she was also chock full of artificial blood until her system could be relied on to produce her own blood, but she was pretty sure there had been some other modifications tossed in there. Eye surgery was a thing that had happened at the very least. Judging by the nature of the organization that apparently owned her, she could probably look forward to some more things done to her that she hadn’t asked for.

It was nice that all she had to do was nod at appropriate moments in the monologue she was only barely paying attention to. As far as she could tell, Robot Eyes was very happy that she was turning out to be a suitable investment and was looking forward to working with her. Add in the fact that someone would be by to help her acclimate to this century (she read that as: fill her head with propaganda), and Jamie was not enjoying the mental picture she had developed.

On the one hand, she was going to be a badass.

On the more relevant hand, actual physical exertion was going to become a common occurrence.

This did not jive well with her lazy soul. Her spirit animal was a sloth with a banner that proudly proclaimed she lived to “Nap all day, sleep all night, party never.” Which was only partially true. Really it was more like “Nap all day, surf the Internet all night, party on holidays.” Oh for fuck’s sake, she was a sarcastic gamer who died of a sudden rip in her heart before she had even turned thirty. She had spent the last century and half or so hanging by her ankles in a liquid nitrogen tank with three other naked people and five actual heads. This did not suddenly equate to ‘proud card carrying member of the Space Nazi Party.’

Her body felt like what she had suddenly realized her mother’s schnitzel felt like: overworked, sore, stretched out, and in desperate need of a nap. Weird, seeing as how she had sort of spent more time dead than she ever had alive, but she’d take it.

She suspected, from the strange sharpness of her vision that faded in and out of focus, that they had done something completely unnecessary to her person. Jamie felt weak and like she had never been alive like this all at once, a contradiction in states of being. It was all she could do to stay awake, eyes locked on the screen as she reclined languidly in the overly suspicious chair that was the only bit of furniture she could see in the cold metal room. There were lights at the corners, humming away with bright blue glows that would periodically brighten until she could feel a sizzle on her skin.

They left her naked and alone, with nothing to listen to but the unending loop on the screen that took up the entire wall. She was too worn out to do anything but listen and analyze the rhetorical skills of Mr. Robot Eyes. There were metal loops around the chair that spun and beeped, analysing and displaying information on glowing yellow screens around her even as she contemplated her life as it stood.

Common sense said that screen with the spiking line was her heartbeat, verified by a moment of rapid breathing and forcing herself to start a panic attack. Thus verified, she settled her heart with a glorious bastardized meditation that was more lamaze breathing than anything any meditation specialist would recommend. The plan was never stupid if it worked. The screen with the flashing numbers that climbed and sank as she breathed was apparently her oxygen level and some other things she couldn’t figure out, but were probably related to some chemical necessities of biological processes.

Jamie was not a fan of the lines jammed into her arms and legs, glowing blue tubes that pumped things into her noodle body with whirring hisses and cold pressure that made her joints ache. She missed her hair, but the sore spots on the sides of her head and back of her neck told her enough to guess. Her skin stretched in new ways, arms and legs heavy and awkward. There was a violet tinge under her nails that ached when she tried to bend them, and she soon gave that up as a loss when her skin began to bloom purple instead of a familiar red.

Whatever was in her veins now wasn’t normal. Or at least what had been normal when she had been alive. Cheerful thoughts that.

The Illusive Man seemed to have a particular hate for aliens.

This would have surprised her, had she not been listening to this same video on loop about thirty times. It played when she was awake, kept going when she was asleep. All she had in this room was his face and his voice, and she wanted to rip his throat to pieces to make him shut up. Smash his head against the cold metal floor until he just… stopped talking.

Vorcha were disgusting.

Turians ate people.

Hanar were demented jellyfish.

Batarians were the literal spawn of the abyss.

Asari were freaks.

Patient A-397 was seventy percent certain that if she saw a rachni at any point in her life, she was going to kill it with fire and salt the ashes where it had been.

Volus were out to strangle the economy and must be stopped before they got to whatever bank had the remnants of her money.

Quarians were space’s answer to annoying homeless people with questionable diseases.

Salarians were bug-eyed freaks who dabbled in mad science.

Krogans were a blight on space.

Vorcha were also a blight on space.

Yahg were space’s answer to serial killers.

As far as she could tell, everything in space was out to kill and eat humanity. Pleasant stuff really. Humanity was apparently their new favorite food stuff. Especially the babies.

It was kind of odd how humanity and the Systems Alliance (because oh no, we had a cross-planetary government now) had played nice and joined the governing body of the man-eating aliens.

Jamie was slightly offended that the Illusive Man thought she was stupid. Apparently he thought she was so stupid that she couldn’t recognize propaganda when she heard it. Laughable, considering how her entire specialization in college had been  _ the production and dissemination of propaganda _ . He wasn’t even using good propaganda. His ranting would have been much more effective if Jamie hadn’t already started off with the fundamental belief that humanity was a blight on their home planet and was probably attempting to spread like a plague across the universe.

Apparently there was something out in the universe called a thresher maw that she could entirely believe was just as deadly as the Illusive Man claimed. It helped that he had actual film evidence of those things and their monstrous nature. Space’s answer to a tremor worm then. Ok. She could live with that. Kill it from orbit with whatever passed for a cannon these days. Screw fighting it on foot, that was how people died.

Krogan savagery she could also believe. At the same time, the video clips that played were terrifyingly impressive. Space apparently had living tanks that would have been the best of war buddies with the Mongol hordes. Genghis Khan would  _ love krogans _ . She had thus determined that  _ krogans were the shit _ .

Asari commandos were fucking terrifying. Anything that as a species could create miniature controllable black holes with the power of their minds was something to be respected. Though apparently that was less as a species and more as a weird mutant thing. She could get behind that, right up until the Asari commando portion of the loop. That was straight up violence and it made her seriously question the sanity of the Illusive Man.

Patient A-397 was to be optimized and trained in order to be on par with an Asari commando.

Patient A-397 was supposed to be the pinnacle of humanity’s technological accomplishments.

Patient A-397 was pretty sure this was a load of bullshit, but as she did not fancy having a bullet for breakfast she would be going with this.

Patient A-397 was going to hate this with every fiber of her being.

Jamie Barnes was going to learn how to be a murder machine. But first she was going to have to figure out what exactly had been done to her body. Along with a few other basic things. Even before all of that, she would have to be able to sit upright and not rely on a catheter and what she really hoped wasn’t a colostomy bag for her most basic biological processes. There was a tube down her nose that she would have loved to rip out if she could raise her arms more than an inch off the armrests.

Sixteen. There were sixteen tubes attached to her body that she could see, each one of them dripping something else into her body. Ten of them had blue glowing syrup, one had a thick off white cream that went in her nose, two more had faintly glowing yellow stuff, two more with dark purple liquid that reminded her of blood for some odd reason, and the last was clear and what she only hoped was saline of some sort. Sixteen in, two out for obvious reasons. There was a solid tube stuffed down her throat that she could tell was the only thing keeping her breathing.

One hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three hippopotamus, four hippopotamus, five hippopotamus. And there went that bright flash of light that tingled across her skin.

The primary goal of Cerberus was the advancement of humanity as a species. Cerberus stands for humanity as the guardian of our future.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the aliens, by the advance of industry, precipitated into humanity, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply humanity with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Jamie almost wanted to laugh.

Laughter, however, was not conducive to her continued existence. Besides, the tube in her throat was dead set on pumping in oxygen, and she kind of needed that sweet succulent oxygen to continue her questionable survival status as ‘alive’. No matter how ridiculous the drone of Robot Eyes was, she was not allowed to laugh at it.

Patient A-397 wasn’t allowed to laugh.

Patient A-397 was only supposed to do their absolute best.

It was actually pleasant in the room, for all of her apparent nudity and baldness. At least she was assuming she was bald. Hair probably didn’t take to liquid nitrogen well. The lights, while they went off with a searing flash once every five seconds, where actually a pleasant sort of blue haze that kept the sterility of the room from being completely eye-searing. She could appreciate that, right while she hated it.

Patient A-397 had been on auction to batarian slavers.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Vorcha were disgusting.

Turians ate people.

Hanar were demented jellyfish.

Batarians were the literal spawn of the abyss.

Asari were freaks.

Volus were out to strangle the economy and must be stopped before they got to whatever bank had the remnants of her money.

Quarians were space’s answer to annoying homeless people with questionable diseases.

Salarians were bug-eyed freaks who dabbled in mad science.

Krogans were a blight on space.

Vorcha were also a blight on space.

Yahg were space’s answer to serial killers.

Patient A-397 was to be optimized and trained in order to be on par with an Asari commando.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Patient A-397 was supposed to be the pinnacle of humanity’s technological accomplishments.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Wiggle your big toe.

The primary goal of Cerberus was the advancement of humanity as a species. Cerberus stands for humanity as the guardian of our future.

Patient A-397 wasn’t allowed to laugh.

Patient A-397 was only supposed to do their absolute best.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Patient A-397 was supposed to be the pinnacle of humanity’s technological accomplishments.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

The primary goal of Cerberus was the advancement of humanity as a species. Cerberus stands for humanity as the guardian of our future.

Patient A-397 wasn’t allowed to laugh.

Patient A-397 was only supposed to do their absolute best.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Patient A-397 was supposed to be the pinnacle of humanity’s technological accomplishments.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

The primary goal of Cerberus was the advancement of humanity as a species. Cerberus stands for humanity as the guardian of our future.

Patient A-397 wasn’t allowed to laugh.

Cerberus was the only path to save humanity.

Patient A-397 was only supposed to do their absolute best.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Her name is Jamie Buchanan Barnes. She was born in 1990, in Fort Knox, Kentucky.

Cerberus was the only path to save humanity.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 can hear him breathing.

Patient A-397 blinks when he blinks.

Patient A-397-

Her name is Jamie.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 did not exist.

Patient A-397 was dead.

Patient A-397 was alive.

Cerberus was the only path to save humanity.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

_ Her name is Jamie. _

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

_ Her. Name. Is. Jamie. _

Patient A-397 wasn’t allowed to laugh.

Patient A-397 was only supposed to do their absolute best.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 existed to serve Cerberus.

What was in the clear tube?

Cerberus was the only path to save humanity.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Cerberus was the only path to save humanity.

Altogether collisions between the species of the universe further, in many ways, the course of development of humanity. Aliens find themselves involved in a constant battle. At first with the turians; later on, with those portions of aliens themselves, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with aliens of the Council and otherwise. In all these battles, they sees themselves compelled to appeal to humanity, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. Aliens themselves, therefore, supply humanity with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, they furnish humanity with weapons for fighting aliens.

Vorcha would be killed.

Turians would be killed.

Hanar would be killed.

Batarians would be killed.

Asari would be killed.

Volus would be killed.

Quarians would be killed.

Salarians would be killed.

Krogans would be killed.

Vorcha would be killed.

Yahg would be killed.

Patient A-397 had been saved by Cerberus, because she would be the best of humanity.

Patient A-397 can hear him breathing.

Patient A-397 blinks when he blinks.

Patient A-397 served Cerberus.

_ Her name is Jamie Buchanan Barnes, and she is so done with this shit. _


End file.
